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Revisiting “Nonviolence is Patriarchal” In: How Nonviolence Protects the State related tags: #HNvPtS

This part, in particular, is not sitting well with me because I feel like it overlooks the very obvious things that Peter doesn't want to really deal with (and it feels very much like bell hooks's supposed “I support victims” victim blaming:

Likewise, whose notion of freedom does not include women’s being able to defend themselves? Responding to the presumption that women can only be protected by larger social structures, activist Sue Daniels reminds us, “A woman can fight off a male attacker by herself....It is absolutely not a question of who is physically stronger — it is a question of training.”

I think Peter is conflating critiques of violence-first and violence-only strategies (things that are inherently manarchist) with the above. No one has ever said that women cannot defend themselves (ironically, for his entire time in the spotlight, he has done nothing except speak over anarchafeminists who have repeatedly championed KYLR—if KYLR isn't self-defense, I don't know what it is).

Very few (actually... none?) of the things that he misreads state that “women must rely upon larger social structures.” If they support nonviolence, that nonviolence is universal (which means it applies to everyone); if they critique violence, it's a specific kind of violence.

This Sue Daniels quote comes from a personal email and is, as a result, unverifiable. It also means that we can't know what the full context of that quote is and what aspects she was being prompted to respond to. Since we know how Peter behaves, we have to wonder what he was discussing with her. (Also, according to the footnote that comes with it, she recommends that we read Martha McCaughey's Real Knockouts: The Physical Feminism of Women’s Self-Defense... which I'd go out on a limb and say that Peter hasn't read. I might add it to my reading list, but I'm so exhausted of his bullshit rhetorical flourishes and ignorance of the things he refers to that I wish I could burn at least one copy of this book out of frustration.)

“The Will to Win! Women and Self-Defense,” an anonymously authored pamphlet, adds the following:

“It is ridiculous that there are so many counseling and support organizations for women who have been raped, attacked, and abused but hardly any that work to prepare and prevent these things from happening. We must refuse to be victims and reject the idea that we should submit to our assailants to keep from arousing further violence. In reality, submitting to our assailants will only contribute to future violence against others.”

This is a pamphlet put out by the Jacksonville Anarchist Black Cross, but I cannot find it. It'd be interesting to read it, though. However, I can only guess the full context of this quote. (Searching for it only leads me back to Peter's book.)

I think it's a fair quote in that it is absurd that we have some (not “so many” because they aren't as easy to access as this sentence would insinuate, and they often ignore queer victims). There really aren't that many counselling or support organisations for abused women; there aren't even ones that support immigrant women when they want to escape their abusers, since they often try to coerce a desired outcome on them.

There are a lot of critiques of these counselling services and support organisations, but the fact remains that we need more of them along with being able to engage in supported self-defense. However, we know that even anarchists are loath to support women and people of marginalised genders who fight back, so maybe it'd be nice to also see these attitudes shift... But considering the number of sources I've managed to link back to a notorious anti-feminist “anarchist” in Peter's own work? It's interesting to say the least.

The entire idea that violence is masculine, or that revolutionary activism necessarily excludes women, queers, and trans people is, like other premises of nonviolence, based on historical whitewashing. Ignored are the Nigerian women occupying and sabotaging petroleum facilities; the women martyrs of the Palestinian intifada; the queer and transgender warriors of the Stonewall Rebellion; the innumerable thousands of women who fought for the Vietcong; women leaders of Native resistance to European and US genocide; Mujeres Creando (Women Creating), a group of anarcha-feminists in Bolivia; and British suffragettes who rioted and fought against cops. Forgotten are the women from the rank and file to the highest levels of leadership among the Black Panther Party, the Zapatistas, the Weather Underground, and other militant groups. The idea that fighting back somehow excludes women is absurd. Not even the history of the pacified white “First World” bears it up because even the most effective patriarchy imaginable could never prevent all transgender people and all women from militantly fighting against oppression.

This is flattening a critique. All violence is not inherently masculine. However, some ways of engaging in and utilising violence are. A lot of white manarchists do not like to engage in communication with the people around them and will often make decisions and expect people follow them. Why? Why should we? Why should we take risks that we weren't even consulted on, even in the spur of the moment? For someone who wanted to, as it usually happens, start shit?

And I don't have a problem with people antagonising oppressors, but I do think they need to be more considerate of who is around them and that they should have strategies that acknowledge other people.

That's largely what all of those groups that Peter brings up do, but this book is him getting mad at people because either they're made into strawmen or are people who he failed reading. Most of those groups? They actually engaged in strategic violence with an understanding of who was around them. Some failed miserably, but most of them knew the risks they were taking and made it known to the people around them what those risks were and that they were doing it.

This meant that people could decide if they also wanted to take those risks or provide support in another way. I'm so tired of him conflating strategic violence with violence-as-default.

How Nonviolence Protects the State: Footnote 121 – Stick it to the Manarchy

For example, Robin Morgan, The Demon Lover: On the Sexuality of Terrorism (New York: W.W. Norton, 1989). The Rock Block Collective’s pamphlet, Stick it to the Manarchy (Decentralized publication and distribution, 2001), makes valid criticisms against machismo in white anarchist circles, but suggests that militancy itself is macho, and that women, people of color, and other oppressed groups are somehow too fragile to participate in violent revolution.

Peter can't read and reads what he wants into things people say. Also, before I get into the critique of this footnote, I need to make it clear that, when Peter uses anarchist sources, he always finds ones that he disagrees with and critiques in the text and footnotes. This one makes the claim in the text saying that:

Pacifists and reformist feminists have often charged that it is militant activists who are sexist. In many specific cases, the accusation has been valid. But the criticism is frequently broadened to suggest that the use of violent activism itself is sexist, masculine, or otherwise privileged.

Which is true, but it's also not the total story.

So I looked for Stick it to the Manarchy (it's... whatever).

But I think we need to take this paragraph in conjunction with the above:

To build the movement we must be more than merely relentlessly physically rugged, devoted to the cause, self-sacrificial, and militant. Those who cannot afford – monetarily, physically, or emotionally – to risk arrest, lawsuits, of physical assault are excluded from this club. This means that many women, people of color, the young and elderly, and the economically disadvantaged do not have what it takes to participate in the manarchist revolution. Is this a revolution to benefit the participants who are mostly middle/upper class white males, or is this a revolution of young warriors sacrificing themselves for the good of the women and children they exclude? Both are unacceptable.

A key phrase: “we must be more than relentlessly physically rugged...”

This phrase indicates that they are okay with these actions taking place, not that they don't want them to happen. However, what they wanted is for there to be more options available and for people to do more than the stereotypically macho ways of behaving.

They then state that “those who cannot afford ... to risk arrest, lawsuits, [or] physical assault are excluded from this club.” This is also true, which Peter ignores. They are not saying, as Peter indicates in his footnote, that any person from these marginalised groups is “somehow too fragile” (the fact that he says “somehow” indicates that he isn't even thinking of how these people might be impacted, such as many of them being core parts of ensuring their families' survival, which thus means that many of them have been socialised to be more risk averse).

They also state:

Marching in the Black Bloc we have found many are tough enough to get hit on the head, but not open enough to say hello, let alone communicate tactical ideas, need, or feelings. This embodies the typical male gender role.

Which, again, highlights that we need far more than just the aggressive tactics that a lot of manarchists embody and promote.

Hell, earlier? And this is something that Peter sort of snidely discusses... they say this:

In this critique, Slip raises an important point about the need for militancy, defiance, and fundamental subversion of the system. Yet, his analysis around “NO COMPROMISE” remains problematic. In a capitalist system, we all must compromise. No one is perfect, and we are all implicated with the oppression that this system is built on. Some are more implicated and privileged than others are. It's ironic that the more privileged are often the ones who make the call for “no compromise” at mass actions. We should question who is able to “not compromise” at large demonstrations. For example, as four white, college students, it's pretty easy for us to be militants at mass actions. In addition to easy access to lawyers, the cops and courts treat us better than classes of people who are traditionally victimized. It is much harder for people of color, the economically disadvantaged, and people who are not physically capable of intense physical confrontation to take such a position.

This is largely true, but this is one of the parts where I have some degree of disagreement with them, and that disagreement stems from the following sentence:

In a capitalist system, we all must compromise. No one is perfect, and we are all implicated with the oppression that this system is built on.

That is nonsensical and doesn't explain why we should compromise, as the implications are that we should compromise with the state to ensure our continued survival... which is counter-intuitive. I think it's that these four people, at least when they wrote this, have little understanding of what militancy can be and that we should compromise as little as possible. The fact that we do should be interrogated, particularly when we choose to do it and how we do it... They're missing that aspect.

But so is Peter because he doesn't even engage with what they actually wrote and insists that they claimed that they had said people were “too fragile” when they didn't.

(Ironically, shitbag Wolfi Landstreicher sent them a response which they should've thrown in a bin because we shouldn't engage with an anti-feminist, which has been known for years. Granted, they also responded, so.)

How Nonviolence Protects the State: Footnote 120 – about bell hooks #HNvPtS

bell hooks presents a more complex analysis, dealing also with the violence of women, in several books including The Will to Change: Men, Masculinity, and Love (New York: Atria Books, 2004).

Dubious that it is “more complex,” as her work is largely polemic and without evidence. There are a lot of assumptions being made, and she doesn't even bother to provide references for us to look back at.

However, the women’s violence that hooks discusses is not a political, conscious violence directed against the agents of patriarchy, but, rather, an impulsive displacement of abuse aimed at children and others lower in the social hierarchy. This is one example of a true cycle of violence, which pacifists assume to be the only form of violence.

This is equally as problematic as bell hooks' work. First, the belief that the abuse that is engaged in by women isn't political is nonsense. Everything is political, even if the intent isn't to be; it's just not political in the way that Gelderloos wants it to be, which is towards some concept of revolution.

Second, the cycle of violence is bullshit, especially as Peter uses it here. People who are abused are not inherently likely to become abusers, which is what the “cycle of abuse” implies. It doesn't engage with what people are shown as socially possible. The actual cycle of child abuse is not that abused children become abusive adults; it's that people see that child abuse is acceptable (eg: “spanking children is fine”) and perpetuate that cultural norm. We also see this in white supremacist structures that believe certain races (eg: East Asians) to be inherently more abusive, which means that East Asian children are less likely to be taken seriously when they discuss the abuse of the family lives. It's normalised in the general population, and it's further normalised via racism that “East Asians just act this way to the extreme.” And while certain races of kids (eg: Indigenous, Black, and Latino kids—all of whom are over-represented in things like foster care) are likely to get yanked and put in foster care for much less⁎ (and then they're most often placed with white families), kids of other races usually have to endure far more extreme abuse before getting removed from their families because of how normalised abuse is towards children.

⁎Sometimes that “less” is actually “nothing at all except the assumptions of a white school teacher.”

That is what the “cycle of violence” should reflect. It should reflect the normalisation in society of people to behave a certain way, but here? Peter is using it as “abused women take out their abuse on their children,” and that's absurd. It's also polemicised in bell hooks' shit book that he references, too. And that's literally not what the “cycle” should mean.

People who are abused are more likely to continue to be abused (rather, find themselves in abusive relationships). You know why? Because they've been taught that abusive patterns are normal for their lives. They're not inherently more likely to abuse anyone.

I also don't care if an abuser has been abused, for the record. If you're abusing someone, you know what you're doing is wrong... because you've experienced it. Your abuse isn't an excuse to continue abusing someone... nor is it a valid reason. These are choices, and most people who are abuse choose not to. Many of us work against that. (You know who benefits from this kind of reading of the “cycle of violence?” Abusers.)

And while all traumatic forms of violence cycle (that is, have successive ramifications as people maladaptively react to the trauma of the initial violence), revolutionary activists argue that all violent hierarchies are held together by systematic deployments of downward violence, the originators of which should and must be incapacitated.

... Peter, could you make a more incoherent sentence. You've intentionally obscured the point of this one, and I know you have because the rest of your shit-eating book is written in clearer language than whatever this is.

What is the cycle of “traumatic forms of violence?” What counts as “traumatic forms of violence?” I think immigration processes are traumatic forms of violence. Does this cycle? Do immigrants seek to torture other immigrants because the state tortures them? You can't just say this like it's true when it isn't.

Most anti-abuse advocates are people who were abused themselves and work against abuse because of their experiences. Many parents who choose not to abuse their kids were abused themselves and have decided not to do it because they hated it.

Hell, even when I've met parents who've engaged in a singular act of physical abuse (eg: spanking or slapping), they have told me that they were so horrified by their own actions and have resolved to find healthier ways to work with their children. Some of them told me it was because “that was done when we were kids” (normalisation of a shared experience of a generation), but they were horrified after the fact by how easily it could be done and also by the looks of betrayal that their kids had (rightfully so). Were those parents abused? Probably. But they also realised how horrible doing it impacted everyone involved (including themselves).

Cycles aren't personal; cycles are social normalisation. This is why it requires people unlearn much of their prior knowledge.

Revolutionary activists aren't wrong about hierarchies being maintained via violence, though.

The world is not a level playing field on which violence rebounds consistently, evenly originating from and affecting people who are equal in power and responsibility. To be more specific, if women organized collectively to forcefully attack and oppose rapists, specific rapes would be prevented, the trauma of past rapes would be exorcised in a constructive and empowering way, men would be denied the option of raping with impunity, and future rapes would be discouraged.

... Very weird to see this written down in a book by a guy who is so vehemently anti-KYLR and super pro sending abusers to therapy (to the point that he dogpiles anarchafeminists who correctly explain that therapy cannot change abusers who do not wish to change but can teach them skills to abuse differently).

Or, for another example, urban blacks and Latinos who carry out guerrilla attacks against police would not encourage a cycle of police violence. Police do not kill people of color because they have been traumatized by past violence; they do so because the white supremacist system requires it and because they are paid to. Revolutionary activity will, of course, result in increased state repression, but that is an obstacle that must be surpassed in the destruction of the state, which is the greatest purveyor of violence. After the destruction of the state, of capitalism, and of patriarchal structures, people will still be traumatized, will still have authoritarian and patriarchal viewpoints, but individual problems that are not structurally reinforced can be addressed in cooperative, nonviolent ways. Armies cannot be.

Can I just highlight the bizarre fact that the beginning of this footnote cited bell hooks, and her books (including The Will to Change) repeatedly admonish all violence. She does not make room for any strategic violence at all. So this part of this footnote is immediately confusing when you realise that Peter is pushing people to read someone who advocates for full anti-violence while also centering the needs of the oppressor, at least when it comes to men.

Also, that book is incredibly victim-blaming. But men with questionable histories seem to really like it for some reason.